E-mail marketing

Data from Return Path show that worldwide inbox placement rates declined sharply in the last six months of 2011. The company’s most recent  Global Email Deliverability Benchmark report found a decline of 6% for the first time in three years, bringing inbox placement rates down to 76.5% across the globe.

However, in the EMEA region, the situation is much better than in the US and other regions: 85% of emails reached recipients in EMEA. More important than the numbers are the causes. One of the reasons is the overload of consumers, especially during holiday periods.

According to the latest Email Marketing Industry Census by Econsultancy, the main barriers to an integrated email marketing approach are disconnected systems and technologies, with a whopping 46% of responding companies.

Other barriers (each with 15%) are a lack of skills and training; and organizational culture our guest blogger, who looked at the report, writes.

According to an Econsultancy blog post, covering some key takeaways from the report, best practices including segmentation and testing improve ROI.

The rapid growing adoption of smartphones is yet again illustrated by new data from comScore, looking at Europe’s main five markets, the Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the UK.

The company found that smartphone penetration has reached 42% across these markets, which is more than the US where penetration is 39%. The mobile revolution, driven by smartphone and tablet adoption, is altering the way consumers shop and even has an impact on email.

Email has always ranked high in the activities of smartphone users. The Econsultancy report on email marketing, we mentioned in yesterday’s post, found that "user behavior is changing as a result of how email is consumed." And the profileration of (mobile) device is key in it.

Although there are debates regarding the changing role of the subject line in email marketing, for many people the subject line is still very important in their decision to open your emails. In fact, short and to-the-point subject lines are even important if people not to click on them.

In the multi-channel customer journey, every touch-point has a branding element and so does the subject line (and sender and header etc. of an email). Of course trust, what people see in the preview pane and past experiences regarding the relevance of the interaction and content, play a big role as well. But in a customer-centric and cross-channel marketing optimization approach, every little bit counts. And the subject line does matter from a conversion perspective.

The subject line is an important part of the overall email marketing efficiency and customer experience. Subject lines should be personal (preferably even personalized), engaging and depending on the content, the recipient and his behavior and the promise to be efficient.